


Presence

by honeywildandmannadew



Category: Fangirl - Rainbow Rowell
Genre: F/M, Panic Attacks, it's literally just fluff and angst in one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-18
Updated: 2017-10-18
Packaged: 2019-01-18 23:38:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 722
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12398607
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/honeywildandmannadew/pseuds/honeywildandmannadew
Summary: When the weight of schoolwork is crushing, Cath needs a little help holding herself together.





	Presence

**Author's Note:**

> Hi, I literally just wrote this for a YA class plz ignore everything sigh

Who knew that boys were the world’s best (that Cath knew of) anxiety blankets? It seemed like Wren was right. If Cath and Abel had really been dating, and for three years at that, Cath was sure that she would have found out the benefits of a significant other before her entrance into college.

There was a boy sitting on Cath’s bed.

A nice change from having him stare across the room at her from Reagan’s bed while she studied. She liked his closeness. It was new, it was exciting, it was kind of scary because seriously how had she missed this kind of connection with Abel?

It was halfway through Spring semester and earlier that day, Cath had had to sit in the far corner of her dorm room, far away from Reagan’s door-kicking zone, with her head resting between her knees and her breath coming in short gasps. Nothing knew, she supposed, but such a thought doesn’t reassure at all when one is currently in the moment of a panic attack. It should be same old, same old at this point, but when the weight of her inadequacy would not stop pushing down on her chest, she just could not move past it.

Why couldn’t Professor Piper, despite her approachably academic aura, just let Cather leave her fall failures behind? Dad was the priority. Cath hadn’t even wanted to come back to Lincoln, to sit at the desk she sat at last semester and still not do any work towards her Fiction Writing final.

Levi had shown up. That was kind of how he worked.

“Cather?” he called into the room, knocking on the door, raising his voice and repeating her name a little when her heaving gasps could be heard in the hallway. “Can I come in?”

“Yes,” came a muffled sob from inside. “Key.” Monosyllables were sufficient, Cath supposed.

After confirming that he had her consent in using his own spare key to her room, Levi let himself inside the cramped room, devoid of air that Cath couldn’t shove down into her lungs.

“Let’s get you up,” Levi soothed, gently helping Cath up to her bed, lying down between her and the wall so that she wouldn’t feel even more suffocated.

His chest was warm behind hers. His heartbeat was a little elevated, she noted, though it was rather hard to concentrate on anything other than the percussion section that was her own. Simon Snow’s face stared, inches away from Cath’s, as she nuzzled a little deeper into her pillow.

A few minutes passed. They breathed, heartbeats slowing.

“Cather?” Levi whispered.

“Yeah?”

“Can I help you relax?”

Cath pressed her lips together tightly, then released them. “Yeah,” she said on an outward breath.

Levi gently started running his hand down her arm, his own having previously been laid strictly along his side. They usually weren’t like this unless Cath was reading a Simon & Baz fan fic to him. Her voice pleased him, and her immersion into the Simon Snow universe distracted her enough that she wasn’t nervous about physical intimacy.

Professor Piper’s short story assignment was like a ball chained to Cath’s ankle. It just continued to be dragged around, through Fall semester’s finals, through winter break, through Spring semester’s quickly passing weeks. It loomed over her.

Try as she might to push it aside, Cath couldn't quite push it far enough—she was aiming for all the way in the past when the boy whose chest rose and fell behind her own was dating the standoffish girl who slept across the room from Cath. That was over and the short story that never was should be over, too.

Levi continued to stroke her arm lightly, humming every so often. His other hand moved around her to rub her temple. Back and forth, circle comes around. By the time he moved to her other temple, their breaths matched up in a sedate, comfortable pace.

Cath felt his warm breath on the back of her head, and his nose moved some of her hair to the side.

The crushing waves were gone. Air had returned. The hair on her arm raised as Levi’s hand movements started to tickle a bit. Cath was in her room, with Levi, and Simon and Baz: all the boys she needed to stay grounded.

**Author's Note:**

> I seriously related to Cath throughout Fangirl bc I LITERALLY didn't turn in a final paper in my first Fall semester as a transfer, dragged it out through Spring and Summer, and literally did it the first day of the next Fall semester all while it worsened my depression and anxiety. #RELATABLE
> 
> The assignment was to write a fic about one of the novels we had read, and to engage with Rowell's characters or writing style. I'm not huge on writing dialogue (not that I'm the best at exposition, either), but Rowell is so I had to work that in with the short paragraphs. I don't get panic attacks, but I wanted to focus on cath's reactions to dragging out the assignment and kind of show how it would've affected her general mental state like the situation did mine.


End file.
